New documents show potential pipeline routes from Alberta to B.C.’s coast

New documents are laying out the potential route for the controversial pipeline from Alberta to B.C.’s coast.

The documents, obtained by CBC News, show a number of options for the pipeline, with the majority of those ending in northern B.C.

Alberta has released a new promotional video as it continues to make its case for a new oil pipeline to the B.C. Coast.

“My takeaway, looking at all of them, was that it was going further north than Northern Gateway and a lot of terminuses in Nisga’a territory,” Heather Exner-Pirot, with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, said.

Exner-Pirot, who is also a special advisor on energy to the Business Council of Canada, said the routes appear to be selected for political advantage to go through areas more supportive of oil and gas, rather than economics.

“The Nisga’as are co-proponents of Ksi Lisims LNG, so a very pro-development nation.”

The proposed routes show one — the north route — going from the Fort McMurray region of northern Alberta to Observatory Inlet in northern B.C., about 130 kilometres north of Prince Rupert near the Alaska border.

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The other two would start from near Fort Saskatchewan, on the northeast side of the Edmonton region, and have three possible end points.

One of the lines could split past the Rocky Mountains and go north to end in Nasoga Gulf, near Observatory Inlet, while the other proposed option would follows the same path as Enbridge’s failed Northern Gateway route and split at Terrace to connect with the coastal communities of Kitimat and Prince Rupert.

The Northern Gateway pipeline was supposed to connect Alberta’s oilpatch to a port in Kitimat, B.C., but the plan came apart a decade ago when the federal Liberals banned tankers carrying large amounts of crude oil from British Columbia’s northern coast.

From the muskeg and boreal forests of northern Alberta to the rugged woods and mountainous terrain of northern B.C., the routes could pose geographically complexities.

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All would require lifting the federal ban on northern oil tankers — something the B.C. government and many coastal First Nations oppose.

But Alberta may be trying to give Ottawa room to maneuver.

“If they were to proceed with the northern route through Prince Rupert, at least they can maintain their ban for all of that waterway south of Prince Rupert,” said Grant Sprague, Alberta’s former deputy energy minister from 2013 to 2016 and 2019 to 2023.

“Those are challenging waters, in my understanding, so maybe that’s not a bad compromise.”

The Alberta government is consulting directly with British Columbians on these proposed routes and B.C.’s premier says he’s being left out of these discussions altogether.

“We need to be at the table, we should be at the table, we hope to be at the table, but we’re not yet,” Eby said last Monday.

Alberta is also looking at a possible southern route to the Vancouver area, seemingly favoured by Ottawa.

The federal government has jurisdiction over inter-provincial pipelines, so it will make the final call.

— with files from Ben O’Hara-Byrne, Global News

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